Sophie Bridgers
Even as a child myself, I was fascinated by younger children’s perspectives on the world and loved spending time talking with them and joining in their play. As I grew up, I babysat regularly and taught preschoolers ballet. My passion, though, wasn’t child development or science more generally, it was ballet. Starting at age 3, I dreamed of becoming a professional ballerina, and I spent hours in the studio pursuing this goal. My body, however, had different plans: I struggled with physical limitations and debilitating injuries that ultimately forced me to realize that a career in ballet would not be possible. So in my senior year of high school, when I had hoped to be preparing for a move to New York City to audition for dance companies, I instead threw myself into college applications.
I began as a freshman at UC Berkeley in the fall of 2006. Having been singularly focused on ballet, I had no idea what I wanted to major in, so I explored, taking chemistry, biology, psychology, comparative literature, political science, Spanish, and more. I felt lost. I enjoyed all of my classes, but nothing captured my attention or inspired me as much as dance. I decided to try working toward a double major in Biology and Comparative literature and started doing research in an evolutionary genetics lab. I enjoyed the research but not as much as I enjoyed being part of the lab community. I struggled to commit to Bio and CompLit and questioned whether I was on the right path.
One day my mom called to ask if I had ever heard of Cognitive Science; I had not. She had stumbled upon it while perusing my course catalogue and thought I might find it interesting. I was immediately intrigued; this interdisciplinary study of the mind would allow me to keep exploring with philosophy, linguistics, computer science, neuroscience, but also allow me to make progress toward a major. I signed up for CogSci 1. Dr. Tom Griffiths took us on a wild, whirlwind tour of the history of Cognitive Science and its various disciplines. I was fascinated, but I was soon struck by the potential limitations of using a mind to study the mind. In a guest lecture, Dr. Alison Gopnik showed me a way around this problem: studying the minds of children. Children’s representations of the world are different from those of adults’, allowing for more objective examination, yet at the same time, they are the foundations of mature cognition.
I was captivated and blown away by the clever experiments developmentalists created to reveal what young children and even preverbal infants were thinking. I had always loved talking to children, but I didn’t realize that there was an entire field of science dedicated to figuring out what they thought and how they learned about the world. I was hooked.
After an exhilarating semester abroad in Spain, I started working as a research assistant in Dr. Gopnik’s lab. I went on to do an honors thesis in the lab and later served as a lab manager for several years. The graduate students, postdocs, and Dr. Gopnik treated me as an intellectual equal, including me in all aspects of research and even as an author on publications. I was again a part of a supportive and enriching lab community.
During this time I thought I wanted to become a pediatrician, but I could never bring myself to leave the lab to take the remaining courses I needed to apply. The lab’s confidence in me helped me gain confidence in myself. I realized that I was more interested in cognitive development than medicine, and so in 2014 I applied to Ph.D. programs in Psychology and Cognitive Science. I was thrilled to be accepted as one of Dr. Hyowon Gweon’s first Ph.D. students at Stanford, and that training and experience led me to the postdoc with Drs. Schulz and Ullman.
Outside of the lab, I still enjoy dancing. I no longer babysit, but I love spending time with my friends’ and cousins’ kids. I also find a great deal of joy being outdoors, hiking, camping, swimming (though, like Junyi, I am terrified of birds).
